More Amazon Fuckery

In case this wasn't enough to put you off Amazon, now the online retailer is now "stripping the sales ranking indicators for what they deem to be 'adult' material," including LGBTQI material, erotica, and romance novels, and some very familiar feminist titles, too.

Adult Material, according to Amazon: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters by Jessica Valenti.

Not Adult Material, according to Amazon: Playboy: the Complete Centerfolds.

Needless to say, their "adult" material designations seem to have an interesting correlation with teh gay and ladybits. Shocking.

Quoth Amazon:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

But wait—what's this?

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove "adult" titles from its sales rankings. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a "glitch" had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new policy regarding "adult" titles. As of Monday morning, a number of titles affected by the glitch were still without sales rankings. No one at Amazon was available this morning to discuss when the problem might be fixed or what caused the glitch.

Huh. So what we have here is a company that quietly instituted a new homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist policy over the Easter weekend, and is currently playing a waiting game to see if the backlash is small enough to be something they can weather with minimum damage while keeping their new policy in place, or if they will have to attribute the policy to a "glitch" and unwind it.

Make some noise here.

Shaker Eloriane also notes: "[Y]ou can complain to Amazon directly. Their exec customer service email is ecr@amazon.com and their customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575."

[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]